Michael Bracey and Ruth Goring
Filed under: Authors
Award-winning Chicago-based photographer Michael Bracey has received rave recognition for his lectures and exhibitions in the United States and abroad. His accomplishments include the Chicago Alliance of African-American Photographers' (CAAAP) award, a Chicago Arts Assistance Council grant, and the Illinois Arts Council Fellowship for Africans Within the Americas, a ten-year project of travel to twelve countries documenting commonalities among people of African descent, which resulted in a traveling exhibition and a book by the same title. His other books include Urban Waters, coauthored with singer/songwriter Marilee Southworth, which was self-published; and Rivers of Women, coauthored with Shirley LeFlore and published in 2013 by 2Leaf Press (New York). Caras lindas de Colombia/Beautiful Faces of Colombia (2018) was coauthored and co-published with Chicago-based poet and artist Ruth Goring.
As a teen in Hutchinson, Kansas, Michael had attended a 1976 lecture by renowned photographer Gordon Parks (1912–2006). Parks alluded to his own struggles as a Black youngster in segregated Fort Scott, Kansas, and his discovery of the camera as a nonviolent but powerful weapon to expose and combat racism and other social injustices. Parks's words stayed with Michael as he began to explore photography for himself. He became aware that he wanted to visually educate people about cultures—specifically those of the African Diaspora—with accuracy and respect, avoiding exploitation.
After a few years of living on first the East, then the West Coast, Michael’s 1985 move to Chicago began to fill his hunger for creativity, diversity, and a progressive perspective. Having met other photographers with similar interests and goals, he took on various leadership roles in the Chicago Alliance of African American Photographers (CAAAP), launched in 1999 with the mission of documenting the Chicago-area African American community through their own eyes. No longer serving in the organization but continuing to espouse its vision, today Michael travels worldwide with the purpose of documenting marginalized communities to show the oneness of human beings.
Michael Bracey's work has been exhibited widely, and he has given presentations in many venues. Forthcoming exhibitions include People-Places-Photographs, June 1-30, 2024, The Clayworks, 1125 North Main Street, Hutchinson, KS; From Ghana to Liberia, December 6, 2024-January 4, 2025, Hutchinson Arts Center, 405 North Washington Street, Hutchinson, KS; and Africans Within the Americas, June 2025, Chicago Center for Photojournalism, 1226 West Wilson Avenue, Chicago, IL.
Visit Michael's website and follow him on Facebook and Instagram.
Ruth Goring is an author-illustrator, a poet, a translator, and a visual artist committed to social justice and fascinated with the veins of leaves and light on human skin.
She is the author of several books, including Isaiah and the Worry Pack (IVP Kids, 2021), Picturing God (Beaming Books, 2019), and the bilingual Caras lindas de Colombia/Beautiful Faces of Colombia (2018, with photographer Michael Bracey). In 2023 she contributed seven psalm images to the exceptional Bible storybook The Peace Table (Shine Curriculum). She grew up in a large, lively missionary family in Colombia, and in the past 20 years she has periodically accompanied vulnerable human rights activists and communities there. In 2003-4 she twice spent time with a peace community in the remote rainforest of Chocó and created 75 chalk pastel portraits of children and adults as a means of increasing the community's international visibility.
Ruth is drawn to contemplative spirituality and will publish a book of meditations on Julian of Norwich texts, with botanical illustrations, in 2024 with Anamchara Books. Her poems have been published in an array of literary journals and several anthologies, as well as two collections. Her third poetry collection, The Authority of Hunger, will be released in 2025 by Fernwood Press. She has translated No Return Address by Aurora Posada De Gregorio (Spanish to English, 2023) and the forthcoming Para subir hay que bajar by Marlena Proper Graves (English to Spanish).
Active in the Diversity Network of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators in the Chicago area, she is passionate about being a strong ally to writers and artists from marginalized groups. Ruth has a daughter, son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren, and she is close to her seven sisters and brothers and their families. In the yard outside her tiny condo she tends a tiny garden of prairie flowers and wild strawberries, and she takes frequent walks to Lake Michigan, just a few blocks away.
Visit Ruth's website and follow her on Instagram, Threads, Facebook, and Twitter/X.
Winning Entry: Caras Lindas de Colombia/Beautiful Faces of Colombia
Contest Won: North Street Book Prize 2023, First Prize
